Two years ago, IBM launched the Cloud Specialty. From the beginning, we declared the Specialty—like all IBM Specialties—to be an elite program for partners interested in a deeper investment with IBM. The press and analyst communities received the program with enthusiasm.

The Specialty is built around five partner models for cloud. These models address all partner types, such as ISVs, SIs, VADs, and VARS, and focus on what partners want to do with IBM and cloud. Rather create separate programs for different types of partners, we created a single program with multiple paths, thus allowing each partner to find the right fit for their business’s cloud strategy.

Like any IBM Specialty, the partners demonstrate skills, revenue, and references related to a particularly technology and in exchange, IBM provides marketing benefits. Because the program is elite, the requirements for partners are meant to be challenging, and the benefits from IBM are meant to be generous.

Two years ago, private cloud was in full swing and public cloud—at least for large enterprise clients—was in the early adopter stage. So not surprisingly, the Cloud Builder path, which targets private cloud builders, was immediately popular. For the most part, Cloud Builders came out of traditional VADs and VARs and were accustomed to the requirements of a specialty. We assumed that paths designed for public cloud partners would soon follow in popularity and adoption.

But public cloud partners, by and large, have a different heritage. These partners are traditional ISVs and SIs, and many of them resisted the rigors of the requirements. Many found the certification tests onerous and irrelevant, and still others struggled to publicly identify clients who saw their cloud implementations as a competitive advantage. And too often, they concluded that our generous benefits were not worth the cost of qualification. As a result, the application provider and technology provider paths never took off the way we expected.

Meanwhile, entry level programs built around the Ready For concept have flourished with these same partners. In a Ready For, the partner documents their solution in production and in return, IBM provides a badge, or mark, and make the solution available in a catalog. The Ready For SmartCloud Services program in particular has had very broad appeal.

Our partners have voted with their keyboards, and IBM is responding. We are in the process of revising our Cloud Specialty to focus on Cloud Builders and MSPs. The MSP Initiative is a great place to start on working with IBM in variety of geos and industries. Partners interested in working with IBM as a SaaS provider should pursue the Ready For SmartCloud Services program.

Most importantly, these program changes do not diminish the viability of the five partner paths. We will continue to use these paths as the basis for our discussions about what we can do together and how we can jointly drive success for our clients.

How have the five paths helped you? Please let us know how our programs and partner models are working for you.